Donn R. Grenda, Ph.D., RPA
President/Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Grenda has been with SRI since 1991. He took on the responsibilities of chief executive officer (CEO) and president of SRI in 2005. As CEO and president, Dr. Grenda is the visionary behind company growth while ensuring that his team keeps the mission of SRI at the forefront of day-to-day operations. Dr. Grenda holds a B.A. in Economics and Anthropology from the University of Redlands, an M.A. in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. In 2005, he was appointed by the Governor of California to the California State Historical Resources Commission for a 4-year term and served as chairperson for the past 2 years. The commission is responsible for the identification, registration, and preservation of California’s cultural heritage.

Dr. Grenda specializes in historical archaeology, California prehistory, coastal-inland settlement patterns, prehistoric economies, hunter-gatherer studies, and sociopolitical evolution, and since 1986, he has been active in archaeological projects throughout southern California and the southwestern United States. Dr. Grenda served as senior principal investigator and senior project manager for the Playa Vista Archaeological and Historical Project, a large-scale data recovery project in Marina del Rey, California, for the Playa Capital Company. He has also acted as principal investigator and project director for various projects throughout southern California and the Channel Islands. Dr. Grenda directed the Archaeological Field School at California State University, San Bernardino, in the San Bernardino National Forest from 2000 through 2005 and is also on the board of directors of various nonprofits in California.

He has coauthored and coedited many important papers and reports. In 2002, he edited Islanders and Mainlanders: Prehistoric Context for the Southern California Bight with Jeffrey Altschul, and, in 2006, in collaboration with Brian Fagan, David Maxwell, Angela Keller, and Richard Ciolek-Torrello, he edited Life on the Dunes: Fishing, Ritual, and Daily Life at Two Late Period Sites on Vizcaino Point. In 1998, in collaboration with Christopher Doolittle and Jeffrey Altschul, he edited House Pits and Middens: A Methodological Study of Site Structure and Formation Processes at CA-ORA-116, Orange County, California and also authored Between the Coast and the Desert: Archaeological Data Recovery at the Yukaipa’t Site, CA-SBR-1000, Yucaipa, California.